Appeals court: Parents of 17-year-old who killed blind boss in car crash can be held liable

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled this week that the parents of a 17-year-old can be held liable in a wrongful death lawsuit after their son crashed a pickup they owned while driving for work and killed his boss, who was blind and in the passenger seat.

The lawsuit, filed against Jacob Sieberg and his parents, Timothy and Michele Sieberg, by Rebecca Niebuhr, the mother of Jason Niebuhr, had been dismissed by a Blue Earth County judge in March last year.

The court of appeals opinion, by Judge Elizabeth Bentley and signed by judges Renee Worke and Michael Kirk, relied on a Minnesota Supreme Court decision from 1936 to determine that even though Jacob is protected from liability under workers' compensation law in Minnesota, his parents are not.

Michelle Kuhl, the attorney representing the Siebergs, said, “We disagree with the decision and we’re still analyzing our options.” Requests for comment from Niebuhr’s lawyers were not returned.

The Court of Appeals decision explains the dense legislative interplay between Minnesota’s Workers' Compensation Act and the Safety Responsibility Act involving a tragic accident.

Jason Niebuhr owned Wells Computer and Electronics Inc. He hired Jacob, who had just finished his junior year of high school, in 2019. The two bonded quickly, with Jacob testifying that his new boss became a mentor and close friend.

Niebuhr was a technical wizard and an obituary noted that he was beloved as a member of the community in Wells, a small city west of Albert Lea. He specialized in electronics repair and installation for televisions, satellites, cable and internet. The fact that he couldn’t see didn’t stop him from fixing intricate wiring problems or climbing on roofs to work on antennas, but it did mean he often needed some assistance.

Jacob, like many part-time employees who were hired to work at Wells Computer, often drove Niebuhr to and from job sites.

That was what he did on a warm, cloudless summer day in 2019.

Typically employees would drive the company work truck to jobs, but on that day the work truck was already in use. It was lunchtime and Jacob and Niebuhr decided to eat at Jake’s Pizza in Wells and leave the work truck at the job site. Sieberg drove Niebuhr in his personal truck, a 2003 Ford Ranger, something he had done a few times before.

After lunch they drove to a job in Easton along Hwy. 109. As they drove east, Jacob decided to pass a cement truck. As he got back in his lane, his truck drifted slightly off the road near a curve in the highway, and he recalled Niebuhr saying, “Take it easy, man.” The back tire caught grass and the truck rolled four times, coming to rest in a ditch. Jacob raced up to the road, screaming for someone to call 911. He and the cement truck driver cut the seatbelt off Niebuhr to try to render aid. Niebuhr had no pulse. Jacob testified that “time moved too slowly.” Niebuhr died at the scene. When Jacob’s parents arrived, they found him in an ambulance, “beside himself with fear.”

A little over three years after the crash, Rebecca Niebuhr sued Jacob and his parents for wrongful death, seeking damages in excess of $50,000 due to lost of “economic support, counsel, guidance, aid, advice, comfort, assistance, companionship, and protection.”

Jason Niebuhr had been very close with his mother, Rebecca, especially after her husband and his father died. They lived six blocks apart and spoke on the phone constantly.

The question of who, if anyone, might be held liable for Jason Niebuhr’s death is at the heart of the Court of Appeals decision.

Judge Mark Betters dismissed the case in district court, arguing that Jacob driving a personal car for work was not grossly negligent and was not outside the course and scope of employment. Betters pointed to case history in Minnesota involving co-employee liability and the Workers' Compensation Act, including a previous Court of Appeals opinion from a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Korey Stringer’s widow against the Minnesota Vikings after Stringer died of heatstroke at practice.

“The consistent concern is that a co-employee not be held personally liable for decisions that they were required and authorized to make as part of their job,” Betters wrote, adding that because Jacob was immune from liability, his parents cannot be held “vicariously liable” because they owned the pickup.

The Court of Appeals disagreed.

In the 1936 case, a husband, wife and their son went to a garage in Waseca in 1934 to see a man who sold used and new automobiles. They test drove a 1924 model T Ford. The wife estimated they were driving at 12 to 15 miles per hour (there was no speedometer on the car) when the car went out of control after driving through water at the bottom of a steep hill. The car crashed into a tree and the wife was injured. She sued the car dealer. A jury awarded her $750. The car dealer appealed, arguing that the husband, the driver, was negligent and responsible. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the husband and wife are effectively the same person and the husband was immune from liability to his spouse. The court ruled that even though the driver had immunity from liability, the principal owner of the car can remain liable.

In the current lawsuit, the Siebergs argued that interspousal immunity is different than co-employee immunity, which is why the lawsuit brought by Niebuhr’s mother should be dismissed.

The Court of Appeals relied on the language from the Supreme Court case which reads that the owner of a vehicle “may be liable for an act as to which the [driver] has a personal immunity from suit.”

Judge Bentley zeroed in on the phrase “personal immunity” to note that the Supreme Court decision is not narrowly applied to spouses. She also finds other case law since that decision to support that finding. Bentley wrote that the reasoning from that 1936 decision, “applies to co-employee immunity under workers' compensation law.”

How this case could affect the Workers' Compensation Act is something the opinion considered, but the Court of Appeals believes that the Minnesota Safety Responsibility Act shows the state Legislature intended for broad readings when it comes to “relief to injured or deceased victims” from accidents.

The decision also noted that if the role were reversed and an employee were killed on the job, even if it wasn’t because of direct action by the employer, case law in Minnesota shows that the Workers' Compensation Act and the Minnesota Safety Responsibility Act would allow for a lawsuit to be brought against the company where the employee worked. “That reasoning applies equally here,” Bentley wrote.

The lawsuit will be sent back to Blue Earth County District Court for further proceedings, or the Siebergs and their attorneys could ask the Minnesota Supreme Court to hear the case.